A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge at the AMF, C41 – write in second person narration.
M rated/warnings for suicide attempts, mass suicide by various methods and both past and present rape. And mentions of bodily fluids but I'll be amazed if that's what turns you away despite the rest. :)
this lawless island can't rescue you
You can see all the people there. Scars on their arms, running down their backs. Stringy hair like it hadn't been shampooed or combed in weeks. Shallowed faces: bloated ankles that showed how much they'd been drinking. Track marks and collapsed veins, showing how many drugs they'd injected into their wailing bodies, and even more loudly wailing souls. Oddly bent limbs: broken arms or legs or backs that hadn't managed to properly mend – or, rather, people like you hadn't given them the time to properly mend.
You've got a mix of those things. A few track marks covering scars running down your forearms – or maybe it's the other way around. You don't really know…and you don't really care either. You're here because you've given up on your life, just like everyone else.
But…still. It's a little frightening, isn't it? The way everybody's so still – and then suddenly they're not. They're moving. And you're moving too. Terrified. Scrambling to get away.
And suddenly people are dying all around you and you can't get away. People are climbing heights and falling to their dooms. People are throwing themselves into the water weighed down by stones and their own souls and drowning there. People are ripping their stitches with their own nails and teeth and watching their cuts bleed again. But most of those people won't die. You know it because you've tried that before. Your scars aren't nice and neat like some people's are. There are the scars of ripped stitches there. Beneath them, the wounds had already healed a little, with that time. Just like these wounds. Healed a little to leave a fragile thread of life behind.
And then there were the ones who were screaming, who were sobbing, who were trying to get out of the way. The ones who'd suddenly been seized with a desire to escape, to keep on living –
Or maybe it was the loss of control that frightened them.
But not you, right? You'd already lost your control. That's why they locked you away after your third suicide attempt. When you pulled those stitches out thinking they'd let you die in a hospital bed. They didn't. They strapped you down instead. Then shipped you to a nice white room that made you scream and cry and starve because you couldn't die without a blade and you couldn't live either without those drugs you'd been drowning yourself in, drowning and drowning and hoping, maybe, that one day you'd stay drowned.
Well, that's one way you can't die on this Suicide Island. By overdosing on drugs. Even if you have drugs – whatever's in your pockets – it won't last. Maybe a day. Maybe two. Maybe just a single shot. But they won't last. They won't be enough to kill.
But there are other ways and you're watching now: watching people set themselves free – or doom themselves. And it's frightening, because though you've tried to die so many times, you've never actually seen death. And now these people are dropping like flies. It scares you.
It makes you follow those few people who walk away from it, searching for a place where they can find water and food and shelter. And maybe you don't realise it yet, but you're searching for life by searching for those things. You're searching for a reason to keep on living.
But it doesn't work out that way. Yes, you and those people you followed just like you do find water, and food, and shelter, and other people follow you too. And you go to sleep for the first night. But then everything else about this island clicks in to your minds.
Maybe not you women so early. But the men. Their primal instincts. Food, water, shelter…and sex.
You're awakened by a scream near you. One of the other girls – and you can see her scars nice and pretty and neat climbing down the back of one leg as it's lifted up – is screaming. Struggling. Begging for help. But no-one's helping her, though like you they're awakened by her screams…or maybe they were already wake. Like those four men surrounding her. Men who suddenly don't look like they've given up on life at all. Rather, they look like they've found paradise.
And maybe they have. Because Suicide Island is more than an island where the ones who don't want to live are left to die. It's a lawless island, where the chained are cut loose. Your chains as well, except for one. Those straps are gone. That white room is gone. But you're still a woman, still a feeble little girl in front of these men. That distinction of society hasn't gone.
And just as that clicks, there are men surrounding you, grabbing you, trapping you.
You scream as well. Just like that other girl screamed. And maybe it wakes a few more people. Maybe it draws more eyes. But what are the use of those eyes? Nobody stands up for you. The men just leer at you. The women are too afraid that they'll be next – or they already are. Caught. Just like you.
This is the lawless island. No laws. Nothing except for instinct. Food, drink, shelter, sex.
You don't want sex. It doesn't matter. The women have stopped screaming now. Maybe they don't want it either. Maybe they've realised they do. Or they don't care. Some of them were like you except they became dolls instead. Maybe you should have taken that route, instead of struggling. Struggling those memories. Struggling those binds. Then you wouldn't be struggling now. Struggling when they pin you down, strip off your clothes, fondle your breasts and sneak their raw animal desire between your legs. There's nothing to struggle in when you're set completely free after all.
There is only one escape, but then they'll just have sex with your dead body because there are no morals on this island either. But you don't think about that. You're even more terrified than in that afternoon on the beach in that suddenly frenzy of suicide attempts. Death was something you'd strived for. This was not. This – this was what you'd been running away from.
Conflict tears at you as the men continue. They're lucky. They don't feel pain. They act to their desires. They feel pleasure but they aren't disgusted with it because there's oh so much pain and distraught mixed in. Their innards aren't being shredded to bits. Their soul isn't remembering past times, past pains – those pains that tipped you over the edge, that got you in to drugs in the first place, that first suggested to you to end your life, that made you obsessed with that escape until they sent you here –
And they were so cruel in sending you here when they could have let you die years ago and get it over with. Maybe you'd had a little bit of hope.
But now it's the same as it was back then, that first painful night, except without the hope. Because there were people who could have saved you but did not. People who sent you away. Who gave up on you. Who ignored you. Who just watched you.
You can't get up tomorrow. Not to this lawless island that can't rescue you.
Your clothes are still there, soaked in semen and urine and blood, but none of that will matter once you're dead. Once those clothes are torn and twisted in to a rope and tied around your neck like a noose.
It's like a cycle that waxes and wanes, and this time, no-body will stop you at your lowest point. And you've already tried waiting for hope. It didn't work.
You die on Suicide Island just like everybody else.